Armor as DR and Defense Bonus = Fighters Rule?

[The_Gneech]

For various reasons, I am looking at ways to tweak D&D a bit more in the sword-and-sorcery direction. However, I also want to stick to the core rules for the most part, largely because I want to be able to use E-Tools. (If there was character generation software for Conan OGL, I'd just go ahead and use that.)

Anyway, I'm looking at Armor as DR and Defense Bonus as possible variations, and I'd like to hear people's experiences with them.

What appears to me to be a likely ramification of these rules is that fighters are not just better at combat than non-fighters, they're much better. Fighters are harder to hit than other classes (because of the high Defense) and can soak up the most damage (due to the ability to use high-DR armor).

Is this the case? If so, what can be done to mitigate that?

-The Gneech

 

[Storyteller01]

We're using a defense roll with a level based adjustment for our campaign. It works well so far, no inherent 'the fighter never gets hit' complaints. Then again, defense is an opposed roll. The random factor may help mitigate some of the advantage.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Those rules will tend to make fighters more powerful at low levels and about as powerful at high levels. The same is true for Clerics, Paladins and any other class with Heavy armor. Also, expect to see a lot of characters dipping into levels of classes with heavy armor proficiency. The sudden jump to the best defense progression is extremely tempting, not to mention the benefits of high DR.

Against 1d6+1, DR 4/- is awesome. Against 4d8+48, DR 4/- is negligible. Armor as DR is great against low damage and weak against high damage. It's more useful against two-weapon fighters and rapid shooters than against two-handed weapons.

So your fighters should survive their first four levels like champions (about the same way Warforged fighters with Adamantine Body work) before they fall prey to all the normal downfalls of fighters at the five plus range.

 

[Darklone]

Most rules with armor as DR have also rules how to bypass that armour with e.g. sneak attacks or critical hits...